The use of security and surveillance systems is becoming more widespread in modern society. In addition to providing security measures that protect assets and individuals in commercial, residential, and public settings, security and surveillance systems are also being adapted to improve the efficiency and versatility of processes and/or procedures in a variety of businesses. One important aspect of security and surveillance systems is the need for upgrade and/or maintenance operations. This is a necessary but generally cumbersome and costly aspect of providing security measures. Moreover, a great number of new security and surveillance applications may be implemented utilizing wireless technology that supports mobile security. This presents an even bigger challenge in terms of upgrade and/or maintenance operations given that cameras, sensors, and/or other equipment utilized by a security and surveillance system may be spread out over a wide geographic area. Many of the cameras and/or sensors, for example, may be operated as mobile devices and may therefore change locations. In some instances, providing upgrade and/or maintenance operations to a mobile security and surveillance system may result in reduced protection as certain portions of the system may need to be disabled while the upgrade and/or maintenance operation takes place.
Security and surveillance operations may require security management systems that are capable of providing either a single security function or, in some instances, a wide range of integrated security functions. Most security management systems, however, are designed to operate as autonomous systems that provide a single security function such as intrusion detection, access control, or audio and/or video surveillance and recording, for example. These security management systems may not generally support the addition of other security functions and/or the addition of other features to an existing security function without a substantial investment in hardware and/or software. As a result, multiple security management systems are generally utilized when a particular application requires multiple security functions. In this regard, any integration that may be necessary to efficiently and/or effectively operate multiple security management systems is typically left to an installer, an integrator, and/or the customer to carry out.
One of the needs driving security management systems capable of supporting a wide range of integrated security functions and/or features are security operations for large government agencies as well as large corporate entities. Corporate or governmental entities may have many different security requirements extending over multiple locations. A centrally monitored integrated security management system allows system administrators or controllers at a central control center to efficiently oversee the many security activities that are supported at remote facilities.
The limited ability of most security management systems to add security functions, to add features to existing security functions, and/or to easily integrate with other security management systems with complementary security functions generally results in an inefficient use of available resources. For example, multiple security management systems that have not been efficiently integrated may have multiple data entry points and/or duplicate databases. Moreover, limited integration capability may also create inefficient use of personnel by duplicating data entry tasks, requiring manual data exchange between systems, and implementing multiple training requirements for the various systems being utilized. Moreover, even when integration between multiple security management systems has been effectively implemented, continued compatibility may be lost when hardware and/or software on various portions of at least one of the multiple security management systems is upgraded.
A common security function that may need to be provided with either additional features or that may need to be compatible with other security functions is video surveillance. Most video surveillance operations are provided by stand-alone closed circuit television (CCTV) systems that are commonly found in, for example, office buildings, external structures, schools, railway stations, and even on city streets. An effective integrated security management systems may require that a CCTV system be compatible with other security functions such as access control methods augmented with biometrics, security tracking systems, and/or access tracking systems, for example. Moreover, video content analysis may be utilized to add additional security features to video surveillance. However, most CCTV systems and their components are not easily upgradable nor are they easily integrated with other security functionality. As a result, integrated security management systems comprising video surveillance operations are not readily available. Moreover, the ability of these integrated security management systems to evolve and provide further security functions and/or additional features are generally limited or may be accomplished only with a substantial investment in hardware and/or software.
A feature that may be of importance in CCTV or surveillance systems is the processing of video streams in a CCTV video camera. Most of the CCTV digital video cameras may utilize simple and cost effective image compression techniques such as JPEG or JPEG2000, for example, to process streams of video images (MJPEG). However, while video processing operations based on still-image algorithms like JPEG have performed sufficiently well for some video surveillance applications, more advanced systems such as integrated security management systems may require more advanced techniques. For example, current CCTV systems may utilize video compression techniques such as H.261, H.263 and MPEG standards that may utilize the links or correlated information that may exist between images of a sequence to provide more efficient compression. These techniques may enable easy storage of video content on digital media such as DVDs and/or access via the Internet.
However, even these advanced video compression techniques may prove somewhat limiting to the types of features needed in more advanced integrated security management systems that provide video surveillance operations. In this regard, the storing and processing efficiency of these systems may be significantly improved by adding understanding of the contents of the video stream in order to support more advanced operations such as automatic image classification and retrieval.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.